Black Mass

When I saw the trailer for Black Mass, I saw a clip of the scene where Jimmy (Johnny Depp) is just casually shooting an automatic gun in broad daylight in a parking lot, and at that point, the main reason I wanted to see Black Mass was to watch that scene. I wanted to see that scene and I wanted to see Johnny Depp in all that makeup (just a step under Steve Carell in Foxcatcher). I was not disappointed. I have previously talked about how much I enjoy violence in movies and I have now realized there is a difference between Quentin Tarantino's over the top to the point of ridiculousness violence, and this serious, cringe-y, very much real violence that came up in Black Mass. Not saying I disliked the violence in Black Mass, I just couldn't derive any joy from it, especially because the people who are killed in this movie are people who are a threat of gangsters, so they aren't doing bad things and in no way deserve to die unlike the amazing violence that takes place in, specifically, Inglorious Bastards.

Black Mass outlines how James Bulger, the head of a gang in Boston, collaborates with a childhood friend and acts as an informant to the FBI in order to help them take out a rival gang. This whole situation spirals out of control when Bulger uses this agreement to do super illegal things and kill a whole lot of people, with full knowledge that he has protection from the FBI. A good amount of the reviews say that the movie is pretty average, maybe a little bit better than average. It's said that the most impressive thing about the movie is Johnny Depp's acting, which I would agree with, but I would add that the entire cast (which was star speckled) was fan-freaking-tastic.

The violence in Black Mass was very intriguing for me. After watching seemingly casual scenes devolve into straight up assault and murder, my mom and I began to call who was going to die at the start of scenes. It became pretty clear near the end of the movie when someone was going to die.
Johnny Depp did a great job showing the real character of Whitey Bulger when he needed to. The two scenes that really stand out are: the scene in the bar when he calls out the guy for eating the nuts, and the dinner scene when he calls out the FBI agent for giving him the recipe that he claimed was a "family secret". To only add onto the volatile nature of his personality, the people around him when these scenes happen have the most telling responses. In the bar scene, the guy very calmly just agrees and in the dinner scene you can tell the FBI agent is terrified of crossing Bulger again after the confrontation. There's also a crazy scene with one of the FBI agents' wife and Bulger when Bulger gets super creepy and terrifying and threatening. Overall, there's just a lot of decent plot with bits of crazy astonishing scenes throughout.

The story itself is compelling, considering he was just caught in 2011 and James Bulger is also still alive. It's interesting to watch how the relationship between the FBI and James Bulger evolves to Bulger just using the FBI so he could conduct his business without being arrested. Probably don't see Black Mass if you don't like violence, and killing, It isn't really gory but there's a lot of killing. You can at least go to appreciate the story and maybe look away when the vibes get weird.